For items relating to popular education for union democracy, including blog entries, etc.
My version of Leon Rosenblatt's great "Non-Trivial Pursuits."
Summary:
Participants discuss short case studies of workplace and union problems and answer questions about their legal rights and how to enforce them. Also puts legal rights in the context of reform organizing.
Good for:
By Matt Noyes. Based on a class taught for AUD by Steve Downs, a New York City train operator and reform activist who is an expert at Robert's Rules in the real world and a great improviser.
Summary:
By Matt Noyes.
Summary:
This activity uses a simple game to help people learn and remember the basic terminology of Robert's Rules of Parliamentary procedure. (See links to Robert's Rules sites.)
Good for:
Making the jargon and basic procedures familiar, helping people see how to use the terminology to do what they want to do.
Materials:
Grievances – complaints about workplace conditions – are a central focus of day to day trade unionism. There is a lot of educational material available on the various types of grievances and how to handle them – how to identify grievances, how to investigate, prepare, and present grievances, arbitration, etc. (See Schwartz guide, TDU book in Spanish and English, IBT Turn it Around, etc.)
By Matt Noyes. (I got the idea from the late Spalding Gray's "interviewing the audience" performance technique, which I saw him perform in Brooklyn's Prospect Park one summer night. Gray circulated in the audience prior to the performance, finding interesting people who he later brought onstage for a rambling, but very entertaining, interview and conversation.)
Summary:
By Matt Noyes. I started using diagrams to help explain the framework of legal rights and the importance of organizing, then found that the diagrams could also be used to explore people's visions of what unionism is and can/should be. I added the handout later as a kind of summary of my own view of the diagrams.
Objectives:
Ira Shor's book When Students Have Power is a study of a course he taught at Staten Island College, CUNY.
There are several techniques that I have used in my work that are not full blown activities, just tools that you can use as you work.
By Matt Noyes. Adapted from "See, Hear, Feel" in Educating for Change
Objectives:
To generate a concrete definition of union democracy that is meaningful to people; to get past easy, abstract generalizations about democracy that block the definition of real, achievable, measurable goals; to hear from each individual and also create a group definition of union democracy; to flush out any "hotspots" -- points of intense interest, disagreement or controversy.
Summary:
By Matt Noyes. Adapted from Educating for a Change.
Talking about what we don't want can be the quickest, most concrete path to defining our goals. This activity challenges people to clarify and express their goals in a creative way.
Summary:
Brainstorming what it would look like if, instead of your goals, your worst nightmares were realized.
Materials/Prep: flip chart or blackboard, markers, chalk
Number of People: Flexible, probably not more than 30 or so.
